Detroit Mercy’s Antoine Davis May Break Pete Maravich’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Career Scoring Record

Mike Davis has spent all of his adult life playing and coaching basketball, primarily at the college level. Still, he didn’t pressure his youngest son, Antoine, to follow the same path.

During his early childhood, Antoine wasn’t too interested in basketball, but that changed in seventh grade around the time his father became head coach at Texas Southern. Soon, Antoine became serious and asked his father for help. Mike was happy to oblige, designing workouts for his son, researching how top athletes such as swimmer Michael Phelps prepared and showing him highlights of some all-time greats, including an instructional video from Hall of Famer Pete Maravich.

Father and son watched Maravich on the screen and emulated his dribbling and shooting skills. Antoine didn’t know anything about Maravich, but Mike was a long admirer of Maravich, who remains the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball history.

Right behind Maravich on the D1 career scoring list? Antoine Davis, who is now a star guard at the University of Detroit Mercy, where his father is the coach. And this month or next month, Davis could break a record that has long been thought to be almost unattainable.

Entering Detroit Mercy’s game Friday night at Oakland, Davis has scored 3,482 points, just 186 shy of bettering the record that Maravich set more than 50 years ago.

Detroit Mercy has four regular season games remaining and will then play at least one game in the Horizon League tournament. That means Davis would have to average 37.2 points over those five games to break Maravich’s mark, although the average would be less if the Titans advance past the first round.

Davis leads Division 1 with 27.7 points per game, so he would have to exceed that average by a significant margin to top Maravich. Still, he has been improving as the season has gone on, averaging 37.5 points in his past four games, including 42 and 41 last Thursday and Saturday

“I’m playing more free, just enjoying it, living in the moment, instead of thinking about the record,” Davis said. “That’s probably why the record is coming a little bit easier because I’m not thinking about it. I’m not worried about it as much right now.”

Even if Davis does break the record, there will be some caveats. Maravich played just three seasons at LSU from 1967 to 1970 and averaged an absurd 44.2 points per game. Back then, freshmen were ineligible to play, and the NCAA did not have a shot clock or 3-point shot.

Davis, meanwhile, is in his fifth college season as the NCAA granted an additional year for anyone whose season was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Davis is averaging 25.2 points per game in his career, which is 14th among players who have competed since the 1985-86 season and scored at least 1,400 points.

No matter what happens over the next few games, Mike Davis is amazed his son is mentioned in the same category as all-time greats such as Maravich. Mike Davis is an Alabama native who played four years at the University of Alabama, where he averaged 10 points per game from 1979 to 1983.

Growing up in the South and playing in the SEC, Mike was told all the time about Maravich, so when his youngest son started showing interest in the sport he thought a Maravich video would be helpful.

“It was so easy and so simple to teach,” Mike Davis said. “Even the dumbest basketball coach could take that video and teach anybody from the way (Maravich) explained everything.”

Antoine Davis took to Maravich’s teachings, as he did to any advice his father or anyone else offered.

“A lot of parents were like, ‘How did you get him to work like that because my kid won’t do that?,’” Mike Davis said. “I don’t know how I got him to work like that. He automatically, when I said do it this way or do it that way, that’s the way he did it.”

Antoine Davis’ mother home schooled him since seventh grade, but he played in high school on a team with others who were home schooled. He also trained with former NBA player and coach John Lucas and others and played on the Houston Hoops grassroots team.

“We used to work out sometimes three, four times a day,” said Tony Lusk, Davis’ home school coach who was a trainer with Lucas’ company. “I remember in his junior year in high school, when we were trying to get that shot together, we would shoot 3,000 shots a day, 15,000 shots a week.”

Davis was a productive player, but he was small (6-foot-1 and 160 pounds) and overlooked by most power conference colleges. He was the No. 53 shooting guard and No. 313 overall player in the high school Class of 2018, according to the 247Sports Composite.

“He was kind of wondering why everybody was getting (major college) offers but him?,” Mike Davis said.

During the summer of 2017, entering his senior year, Davis committed to the University of Houston to play near his home and for coach Kelvin Sampson, one of his father’s friends.

Mike Davis took over as Indiana’s head coach in 2000 after the school fired longtime coach Bob Knight. Davis led the Hoosiers to four NCAA tournaments in six seasons, including its last Final Four in 2002, but he resigned at the end of the 2006 season. The Hoosiers then hired Sampson, who resigned under pressure in February 2008, only to emerge several years later as Houston’s coach.

“I really wanted to do something on my own at first, and that’s why I wanted to play for Coach Sampson at U of H,” Antoine Davis said.

Near the end of his senior year, though, Antoine had a change of heart. He wanted to play for his father. Antoine approached Sampson, asking for a release from the national letter of intent he had signed. Sampson obliged.

At the time, Mike Davis was coaching at Texas Southern and had led the Tigers to two consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. But that summer in 2018, Mike Davis accepted the job as Detroit Mercy, nearly doubling his salary.

Mike Davis Jr., who had played for his father at Indiana and the University of Alabama-Birmingham, joined the Detroit Mercy staff, too, as an assistant coach. Entering that season, Davis Jr. had a conversation with a friend and mentioned he thought Antoine could average 25 points per game as a freshman.

“His friend thought he was crazy,” Mike Davis said. “He thought, ‘Oh, (maybe) 14 or 15.’ (Davis Jr.) said, ‘No, we didn’t work this hard to average 14 or 15.’”

Antoine Davis surpassed his brother’s expectations, averaging 26.1 points per game that first season (third in the nation) and breaking Stephen Curry’s record for 3-pointers for a freshman. Since then, Davis has ranked in the top five in the nation in scoring each season.

After last season, Davis entered the transfer portal and received interest from numerous high-major colleges. He narrowed his list to Kansas State, Georgetown, Maryland and BYU before deciding in May to return to Detroit Mercy. He was enticed by a major name, image and likeness deal with GlowBall, a Chinese manufacturer of basketballs, and the chance to compete in the NCAA tournament for the first time.

“I just felt like there was unfinished business to do here,” he said.

Davis has scored at least 10 points in each of the 138 games he’s played at Detroit Mercy, setting an NCAA record. He also has a NCAA-record 558 career 3-pointers, and his 4.04 3-pointers per game is third all-time. On Feb. 25, his number zero jersey will be retired during the school’s Senior Day festivities.

Perhaps the only blemish on Davis’ resume? His lack of postseason success. Detroit Mercy has not made the NCAA tournament since 2012. This season, the Titans are 11-16 overall and 7-9 in the league, tied for seventh in the 11-team Horizon League.

The conference tournament begins on Feb. 28, so Davis may only have less than two weeks remaining in his college career. He’s hoping for much more than that, though.

“It’s been a fun five years here for me just enjoying the fans here and enjoying this University that loves me so much and embraces me so much,” he said. “It’s gonna be a sad day for that last time I ever put on a Detroit Mercy jersey.”